1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an obstacle detection system for a vehicle, having a radar which includes an electromagnetic wave transmission means for transmitting an electromagnetic wave in a direction in which the vehicle is traveling and a reflected wave reception means for receiving a reflected wave produced when the electromagnetic wave transmitted from the electromagnetic wave transmission means is reflected by objects present in the traveling direction of the vehicle. The system detects obstacles in the traveling direction of the vehicle based on the detection result of the radar.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A system has been known, as disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 8-240660 and 6-160510, which has a radar to transmit an electromagnetic wave such as laser in the forward direction in which a vehicle is traveling and receive an electromagnetic wave reflected from an object present in front of the vehicle. The radar detects the obstacle in front of the vehicle based on the result of a search operation of the radar and, according to the result of detection, issues an alarm to urge a driver to avoid the obstacle or automatically performs an obstacle avoidance braking.
The above conventional obstacle detection system, however, does not consider an overlap of the vehicle and the object in the width direction of the vehicle. Thus, even when the object's overlapping amount is such that the object can in reality be avoided by a steering operation, the system issues an alarm or performs an automatic braking to avoid a crash. This may increase the frequency of system operation for avoiding a crash with obstacles and also raise the possibility of erroneous operation.